The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [550]
53. George Jerome Goodman (writing as “Adam Smith”), Supermoney. New York: Random House, 1972. Goodman (known as Jerry) chose his pen name after Adam Smith, the father of market economics.
54. John Brooks, “A Wealth of Notions,” Washington Post, October 22, 1972.
Chapter 36
1. Interview with Stan Lipsey. Scripps Howard owned 60% of the paper but had been ordered by the Department of Justice in 1968 to divest it on antitrust grounds because it also owned the Cincinnati Post & Times-Star, a competing paper. Blue Chip bought 10% of the Enquirer’s stock and tried to get the rest for $29.2 million in February 1971.
2. Scripps would have been interested in selling because it was looking at buying Journal Publishing and Albuquerque Publishing and could not own all three.
3. Graham thought that the only alternative to going public was to sell one of the company’s TV stations, which she did not want to do. To protect the business from an unfriendly bidder, Beebe and family lawyer George Gillespie structured the stock sale in two tiers, with class A shares in the family’s hands and class B stock, which carried diluted voting privileges, sold to the public. Katharine Graham, Personal History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
4. Graham told this story to Buffett.
5. Katharine Graham, Personal History.
6. Katharine Graham letter to Charlie Munger, December 23, 1974.
7. Katharine Graham, Personal History.
8. Katharine Graham interview with Charlie Rose, February 5, 1997.
9. Some of the nonvoting B shares went to Kay’s brother, Bill, in exchange for an investment in the company. Kay’s sisters were not investors in the Post. At the time, the unprofitable newspaper was less a financial asset than a public responsibility and a source of prestige.
10. Buffett’s former golf coach Bob Dwyer was the office boy who performed this task, in between running copy for the Post’s editorial department.
11. Katharine Graham, Personal History.
12. These anecdotes are from Personal History.
13. C. David Heymann’s The Georgetown Ladies’ Social Club (New York: Atria Books, 2003)—a well-researched account of the most influential Washington hostesses and the private power they wielded—gave examples, such as a black eye, that indicated that on at least some occasions Phil Graham physically abused her.
14. Stories of the women with whom Phil Graham was involved and the allegation that he swapped girlfriends with Kennedy, including the actress-model Noel-Noel, are contained in The Georgetown Ladies’ Social Club.
15. In her memoir, Graham attributed this partly to the subservience of women in her time and partly to her emotionally abusive upbringing. She seems to have had at least a partial grasp of her own role in enabling Phil’s behavior.
16. Katharine Graham interview with Charlie Rose, February 5, 1997.
17. Ibid.
18. Interview with Don Graham.
19. Beebe had been a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York and, under the direction of Don Swatland, in 1948 was instrumental in designing the structure that protected the Post from a sale outside the family.
20. Katharine Graham, Personal History.
21. McNamara later said he commissioned the “History of the United States Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy” to “bequeath to scholars the raw material from which they could reexamine the events of the time.” Sanford J. Ungar, The Papers and the Papers: An Account of the Legal and Political Battle over the Pentagon Papers 23-27. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972.
22. Dialogue between Graham and Bradlee has been condensed and edited for clarity from Personal History and her interview with Charlie Rose. Description of the scene is from Personal History.
23. Bob Woodward, “Hands Off, Mind On,” Washington Post, July 23, 2001.
Chapter 37
1. Nixon made explicit threats about the licenses, but